Trading Up
by Shieldage
Summary: Having opened an unsupervised dimensional rift, Pinky and the Brain bring a power switching amulet to Sunnydale. Cartoons and chaos follow in their wake.
1. First Exchange

BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Animaniacs & Pinky and the Brain by Spielberg and the WB.

Meeting a Challenge by CousinMary at _Twisting the Hellmouth_. I definitely recommend her Anita Blake and Batman stories.

Happens half-way through Season Six's 'Entropy'. The normal flow of events has been interrupted by the after-effects of a rather surreal dimensional breach in Cleveland. I'm still working on fleshing it out, but there's a decent summary later on in this chapter :)

* * *

A very cute box of baby wipes wandered into Sunnydale's Magic Box one day.

No... That's not right.

The cardboard box was upside-down and, from the two voices coming from underneath, probably wasn't moving under its own power.

Unless it did impressions.

##

"Watch it, Pinky! That's the second time you've nearly touched the artifact!"

"But Brain! I want to be the evil genius for a while. What does it do again?"

The deeper voice released a very put upon sigh. "As you_ just _said, Pinky, it switches the powers of any two beings who touch it. We have come here because I want to steal the healing factor and speed of the one human who has the most acceptable rate of powers per lack of restrictions. The Slayer."

"But that's a female-only line... Zoinks, you aren't-"

"No, Brain. This will allow me to take her powers directly, working around even that little restriction."

Anya wandered by, going about her business in the shop she ran.

"Why do you want to do that, Brain?"

"To win the blasted contest and rule _our_ world,_ Pinky_."

"And why am I here?"

He sighed again. "Comic relief."

Anya wandered back and actually paid attention to the cute cardboard box.

"Please, oh please, oh please!"

"No!"

"C'mon, now, Brain," shouted the wheedling member of the pair. "Just one little rub?"

Anya was terribly paranoid about certain kinds of rodents known for their breeding habits, so this bit of conversation triggered her terror response. As fast as she could, she jumped forward and grabbed the box before it could scamper away.

There was nothing underneath, so she flipped it over.

There were two little white mice on bicycles strapped to the inside of the box through a complex harness of rubber bands. She'd just turned them on their backs and they didn't look too happy about it.

##

"Oh, good." Anya sighed, relieved. "I was afraid you were... You wouldn't happen to be rabbits in disguise, would you?"

"I don't know," said the tall, lanky one. "Brain, are we?"

"No, Pinky," said Brain, with a shake of his oversized head. "If we were, I have hopes that even you would've noticed by now. And you, whomever you are, put us down now!"

"Oh, right." Anya rolled her eyes. "Like I'm about to let two rodents run around a magic shop without some very serious truth and anti-gnawing spells in place. It'd be different if you'd come in as customers, but no, you had to be sneaky about it."

"My dear," Brain began, in a polite drawl. "With all due respect... Bugger off! We're looking for the Slayer and you, whoever you are, _are not her_!"

"I don't think so," she said, turning the box at angle to get a better look at the shiny thing strapped to the back of the shorter mouse. "What do you have here?"

"No!" Brain yelled in vain. "Don't touch the-" He trailed off, Anya's fingers already having made contact with the object. If anything had just happened, it wasn't visible.

Anya, ignoring the mouse's words, freed the amulet from the little leather strap that secured it to his waist.

"Well, it's shiny," she stated, turning it over in her free hand. Her attention was firmly fixed on it at the moment Brain vanished. "I don't really know what it is... Wait, where'd the big-headed one go?"

"Albuquerque?" guessed Pinky. He'd seen his buddy disappear, but-

"Why would he go to New Mexico? It's awful dry and his hair would probably friz."

"Then his tail would match the rest of him! Poit!"

"You know... I like you," Anya said, moving the box and the strapped-in mouse closer to her face. "But, that's not going to stop me from prying every little bit of information about your plot against the Slayer from your rodent lips."

##

Once he'd managed to regain his focus, Brain spent several seconds experimenting with Anya's vengeance demon powers of transportation.

Unexpected, but... Useful.

He jumped back into the Magic Box just in time to hear her threatening Pinky.

##

"It's just as well," Pinky gulped. "I've sworn off larger women."

"What did you call me?" she yelled, shaking the box.

"Put him down!" Brain screamed. Furious, he teleported to Anya's right ankle and sank his teeth into her skin.

His strength had been enhanced by the stolen powers, so it packed quite a wallop.

Anya screamed and, kicking with her wounded foot, dropped both the box and the amulet.

As the box fell to the ground, Brain appeared in it.

The amount of teleportation power Anya had been assigned was a fixed amount based loosely on her human female mass. It was not scaled down to rodent size, so when Brain tried to take everything with him, the two rodents, their bikes and the box disappeared easily enough.

Anya ran off to tend to her wounds.

In her pain, she completely forgot about the amulet, which had fallen somewhere on the floor of her shop...

##

A bit of time passed before Halfrek, Anya's fellow vengeance demon, walked into the Magic Box to find her recently repowered colleague crying behind the cash register.

"Oh honey, is it Xander again?"

"No, worse," Anya sobbed. "I have all these ideas for Rube Goldberg devices filling up my head, but... I've forgotten how to handle money!"

* * *

**Summers' Residence**

"Hey, Dawn, the girls still at it?"

"Yep, Xander, it could take them awhile to crack the system. Oh, hey! You hear about Anya's phone call? Two white mice are trying to capture Buffy, so if you see her, you need to warn her."

"Really? They human-size?"

"Nah, regular, but they can teleport and bite real hard."

"Weird. So where's our favorite Slayer at?"

"Chasing down the usual suspect."

* * *

**A Cemetery in Sunnydale**

On discovering hidden cameras spying on herself and her friends, Buffy had decided to question Spike. That hadn't panned out so the conversation had led to other things.

"... you _have_ to move on, okay? You have to get over-" Buffy said to the vampire she'd fought alongside, who had filled in for her when she'd died, who had loved her for a _long_ time...

"_Get out_!" Spike snarled, halfway-justified. Maybe three-quarters...

Buffy stopped smiling her calm, collected smile (meant to show off her honest honesty).

Turning away, she walked up the short steps to the door of Spike's retro-fitted crypt, then opened it and walked through.

She ran straight into a certain young man named Oz.

The werewolf, ex-boyfriend of her best friend, looked particularly embarrassed about being in Sunnydale after his long absence.

And he'd brought 'friends'.

* * *

**Magic Box**

"I even feel like a completely normal, albeit outspoken, human again!" Anya complained.

"No, Anyanka," Halfrek stated reassuringly. "The magic that D'Hoffryn assigned to you is still assigned to you. I can feel the drain on the system like an extra ring on my finger."

"Well, _I can't_."

"Calm yourself. What we need is someone recently scorned with very low morals."

The bell rang as Spike walks in the door, leather jacket swinging. "Hey, I need a thing."

After he'd caught a glimpse of what Oz had brought with him, Spike had decided to sneak away, very, very quietly...

Anya immediately locked eyes with Halfrek.

"I didn't do it," the brunette stated, spreading her hands. "These things happen."

The recently blonde Anya shrugged, before yelling: "Spike! Hurry! I need to find out if I'm a vengeance demon or not! Wish something harmless and mean-spirited!"

"Hmm..." Spike spent a second in thought. "I wish Buffy would spend the next week bald. Then give her hair that changes color based on her mood."

"Granted," Anya yelled, waving her arms. "Oh, no! It's not! I'm not an awful veiny demon!"

"Well, that's good... Right?"

"No, it's horrible!"

"Will you make up your bloody mind!"

##

"Maybe it's because he's male," Anya guessed. "Hallie! Wish he was female so I can grant his wish!"

"Uh no..." Halfrek said. "You should be able to grant everyone's wishes, it's only taste that's held you back so far."

"I might add that, if you turned me female, I wouldn't be giving you a sodding wish. You'd be a demon, so I'd be able to drain you dry without this blasted chip in my head caring a whit."

"You know," Halfrek interrupted, somewhat fearful for her own demony neck. "I'll just go ahead and investigate this somewhere else."

The brunette nodded to the male vampire and carefully left the shop by the door, before teleporting away.

"Look, obviously you have things on your mind. I care, but I'm not in the mood. Rain check, alright?" Spike said.

As he stalked away, he accidentally kicked the amulet across the floor.

"Oh, what's this?" he asked, picking it up and turning it over. "Some sort of hairclip... No price tag..."

"Just keep it!" the distraught Anya gestured as she sat down behind the counter, returning to the complex physics problems she had suddenly found herself scribbling instead of dollar signs. "Some white mice, who could quite possibly have been midget rabbits, left it here and I don't have the slightest clue what it is!"

"Cartoons have come to Sunnydale, miss," Spike said as he rubbed the amulet with his patterned shirt. "If I were you, I'd stay inside."

With that, he left.

##

A little bit later and a bit too late, it occurred to Anya that the mouse... The other one had called him Brain... _Just might_ have used the shiny thing to steal her powers and bookkeeping ability.

##

"Wait!" she yelled to the empty shop.

* * *

**Just Outside Spike's Crypt**

When the harrowing conversation was _finally _over, the one in brown and the one in blue leaped upon Buffy and planted kisses on both sides of her face, while the pink one launched herself at a particularly embarrassed Oz, throwing her arms about his head and her legs around his chest.

Staring directly into his eyes, she kissed him _smack_ on the lips.

After landing on the ground at exactly the same time -a certain perfection only found among cartoons- the two brothers waved goodbye as their sister curtsied neatly.

Yakko, Wakko and Dot joined their gloved hands and begin spinning around in a circle.

The oddly named Animaniacs spun faster and faster until they were just a blur.

Soon, they weren't their black and white selves anymore... But three little orbs of red, blue and green.

The three points of light whirled in a tight loop, circling around the heads of Buffy and Oz, before zooming off into the night sky.

_**Zot!**_

The word hung there, for a second, before evaporating into mist.

##

"I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying to Spike in that crypt," Oz began, turning to face Buffy. "I-"

"No, uh-uh, me first," the Slayer interrupted her werewolf buddy. "Let me get this straight. You're in Cleveland. You _smell_ a rip in space-time. You investigate a deserted factory and find that someone left a dimensional portal on and, if left unchecked, it would shortly destroy the world."

"These things happen," he replied.

"You tried to shut it down, but were getting nowhere," Buffy continued, frowning. "When three monochrome creatures jumped out from the hole and offer to help save both worlds. You have an adventure. The four of you turn the machine off. They hop in the portal, just as it closes. But, it isn't over."

"Nope."

"They show up, about an hour later, saying that they have studied the designs and have figured out how to cross dimensions completely on their own. _Then_ they say that you owe them and they won't leave you alone until they get _my _autograph. And you still don't know who created the portal in the first place."

"That pretty much sums it up."

"Okay, I can see why you want me to keep my mouth shut about your coming back to town for this _very_ _short_ visit." Buffy nodded. "You didn't come back by choice and feel that meeting up with Willow would not be healthful for either of you. She'd find your reason for being here to be both understandable and completely unbelievable."

"Right."

"Coffee?"

* * *

**Somewhere in Sunnydale**

"In case you're wondering, I've still got my personality. I seem to have lost some of my knowledge of the inner workings of the universe... and gained some business sense... but my evil genius soul and dry wit are completely intact and with me still."

"That's good, Brain. Uh, I guess this is kind of fun for you, but could you please untie me now?"

"Oh, alright."

After Brain freed Pinky from the straps they decided to teleport somewhere for an iced mocha.

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" the big-headed mouse asked the tall and lanky one.

"I think so, Brain, but even if vampires had chlorophyll in their skin they'd still need the same amount of blood. It's not like they'd be able to get enough sun for the little green things to do any good."

"No, Pinky," Brain sighed in resignation. "I was thinking that we should teleport inside the coffee shop's cash register, then buy our drink with their money."

"Why don't we just wait for someone to order what we want, then steal it?"

"Good idea, Pinky! I must finally be rubbing off on you."

"Uh, you now, or you before you traded up?"

"Shut up," Brain said, grabbing Pinky's long tail and teleporting them...

_**##**_

... This was a place of pure blackness... Definitely not part of the food service industry.

They were standing there, the only things of color in the place. Before them was a wall made of soft ebony foam.

"Zoinks," said Pinky, liking the effect.

Brain put his hands into the foam. "This is... This is... Something that wants to look inside of us... A _Memory Soak_!"

He turned to his gangly friend, saying: "Okay, Pinky. Reality is on the other side of this. It must be some stupid restriction on the use of this power. When we enter it, it should simply read our minds and let us through. I'll go first."

Before Pinky could reply, Brain flung himself forward.

The Memory Soak received a detailed description of the mouse's first encounter with a version of himself able to use magic. Of how this had only whetted his appetite for power and how he had built his portal and scoured dimensions for the means to obtain it... How they'd heard of the contest and why they had come to this reality...

Pinky saw the record of events form in the surface of the wall. When it finished playing, he held his nose, closed his eyes, and jumped in.

He left the black foam with an impression of some of the women he loved...

The horse he had lost his heart to and the sea lion that had never really understood him...

##

Language barrier.

* * *

_**...START...BrainAnya...**_


	2. A Rotation and Three Shifts

BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Animaniacs & Pinky and the Brain by Spielberg and the WB. Fire hydrant on loan from Diane Duane's "So you want to be a Wizard"

* * *

They materialized on a fire-hydrant-occupied Sunnydale street corner.

"There it is, Pinky," laughed Brain. "The place which houses the decaffeinated treasures we now seek."

"Um, Brain, I'm worried." Pinky scratched his head. "Should our portal machine really be left on this long?"

"Don't worry, Pinky," the large-headed mouse replied, comfortingly. "Yes, the dimensional breach should have brought us directly to this version of California... Only the presence of multiple Hellmouths left us stranded in Ohio..."

He continued, frowning. "Nonetheless, it's a finely calibrated piece of equipment. Besides... It performed well in the test run... Maybe a bit _too_ well..."

"But Brain," countered Pinky. "What if it, Poit, begins to absorb mystical energies from the Hellmouth... Goes Woo-hoo, Woo-hoo... And threatens to destroy multiple realities? Narf."

"Nonsense, Pinky," Brain replied, bending over and drawing several shapes in the cement sidewalk with his vengeance-demon enhanced strength. "There are safeguards in place."

Shivering, Brain rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "Besides, if you look here, you'll clearly see that if anything was going to go wrong with it, we'd all be dead by now."

He suddenly realized that he was alone on the corner.

He turned around, searching the sidewalk...

No, his fellow mouse wasn't racing for coffee...

"Pinky, Pinky? Where did you-?" he broke off, hearing a strange sound.

He spun to face the fire hydrant.

A small pink thing was running itself around the rim of the hydrant.

Then the lid flipped open completely.

Brain only had time for a short _'No-', _before a giant tongue shot out from the hydrant, grabbing the stunned mouse.

The possessed hydrant happily reeled in its easy meal and the lid clanged shut, covering the gaping maw of the life-saving device.

After a self-satisfied burp, the corner was once again silent.

##

Buffy and Oz walked by, talking.

They crossed the street and entered the coffee shop.

It was quiet outside.

##

Little pink things extended from the rim of the hydrant, just before the metallic top was nearly completely ripped away.

Brain reached back, grabbed Pinky's hand and pulled them both out of the predator's maw.

After they'd jumped down to the sidewalk, Brain turned around and kicked the thing, yelling: "Bad, _bad_ demon hydrant!"

It yelped in pain and confusion, then scuttled away, down the street.

"That's funny, Brain," the lanky mouse stated, wiping himself clean of the digestive juices. "The things back home usually won't swallow us because we're genetically-modified."

"Well, apparently they're more GM-tolerant in this version of California," Brain replied. "Come, _Pinky._ To coffee!"

* * *

Having nothing better to do, Spike returned to his crypt and picked up Buffy and the wolf's trail.

It left him standing at a somewhat unpopular coffee shop. They'd picked a place where the wolf's ex-girlfriend was unlikely to find them.

Breezing into the place, he interrupted Oz's conversation with the Slayer and dropped the amulet onto the small table just as their iced mocha and green tea frappuccino arrived.

Seeing the confusion on their faces, he explained: "I picked this up for you, Buffy. I hope you like it."

Buffy picked it up, then handed it to Oz.

He took it, sniffed it and passed it back to her.

As she held it up to the light, she told Spike, in no uncertain terms, that she didn't want it.

Ignoring her, Spike asked: "Hello, werewolf, still barking up all the wrong trees for happiness?"

"Hello vampire, still madly in lust for Buffy?" Oz said, then grinned at their shocked expressions, tapping the side of his nose.

"We broke up," Buffy stated, blushing. Then she got angry. "If you tell Xander anything about that, I'll track down the members of your band and torture them with Hanson records."

Oz shrugged nonchalantly and sipped his drink.

Buffy looked again at the amulet in her hand, then glared up at Spike. "Where'd you get the hairclip?"

"Metaphorical steal at the Magic Box. Full permission of the owner, by the way."

Frowning at her disgusted expression, he moved to take it. "If don't want it, then give it back."

Fortunately, she pulled it out of reach before his hand could make contact.

"No. It's probably got some twisted enchantment or love spell on it."

"You hand it to him," she continued saying as she dropped it on the smooth table and pushed it back in the direction of Oz.

Oz picked it up and held it out for the vampire.

Completely disgusted by her distrust, Spike grabbed the amulet and stormed out of the cafe.

When Buffy was finished glaring after her most recent undead ex-lover, she examined Oz carefully. "Well, are you madly in love with Spike?"

"Nope," he replied calmly and returned to sipping his drink.

"So... Tell me more about Cleveland. If it's an American Hellmouth, I better know all about it."

He opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden tingling sensation threw him into a state of near panic.

Well-hewn instinct had him pushing his chair back, covering his face with his hands and shoving his head below table-level.

If his eyes had been open, he'd be staring directly into the stunned faces of Pinky and the Brain, but his eyes were squinched shut...

When the unexpected transformation had finished he, with a muttered apology, hands still protecting his disfigured face from view, ran from the coffee shop.

Running along the side of the building, he threw open the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind him.

The bathrooms being on the outside were another reason the 'Daley Sun' was less popular than the 'Espresso Pump'.

##

Pinky had actually been paying attention to what was going on but, before he could mention the amulet's antics to Brain, Buffy stood up.

"Quiet Pinky," Brain whispered, throwing one arm around the taller mouse and the other arm around a table leg. "This is our chance."

Brain concentrated. His stolen powers, free from Anya's greater mass, easily whisked the mice and the small table away.

##

Buffy had risen to her feet when Oz made his escape, but she quickly shook her head and sat back down at her chair, convinced she knew what was happening.

She reached for her cold drink, but -

##

Her drink, and Oz's drink, not to mention the_ entire table,_ had simply disappeared.

##

She stood up abruptly enough to send her chair clattering to the white tile floor.

Several heads turned to look at her.

She shrugged, embarrassed, then picked up both chairs and hid them against another table.

* * *

_Emotion. Am awake. No longer mind captivity. Hunger for blood. Blood flows within me. I giggle in delight._

Oz's beast, for its part, was quite happy with the change. It was still trapped within the young man's flesh, but the combination of new vampiric powers and his living host was making it quite drunk.

##

Oz stood at the bathroom mirror blinking. Yep, he definitely wasn't invisible. His reflection was just gone.

He checked his pulse. Still a surprised, but steady, beat.

He felt his head, but instead of the familiar hairiness of his half-wolf-face he found the ridged brow and, yep, pointy fangs, of a vampire's game face.

This was unexpected. It wasn't good.

Then again, he still had his heightened senses, he had gained the enhanced agility of the vampire package, plus, hey, he'd kept his pulse.

"Okay, I admit I kind of had the shaft as far as useful powers went, but you didn't have to go to this extent," he muttered to the empty room.

He shifted back and forth between vamp and normal face a bit, listening to the noise it made.

He considered working the sound into some audio playback, but dismissed it as a bad idea.

Rubbing his human features, he left the room.

"What's up?" asked a concerned Buffy. She had been waiting outside the shop.

"It's strange, but my inner demon just mutated..." he said, before frowning, sniffing the air, and looking up. "Why did you set our coffee table up on the roof?"

"I'm blaming it either on the normal demons, those weird cartoons you brought with you, or Spike."

"Ah."

##

Pinky jumped down from his perch on the straw, then ran over and threw his arms about Brain. "Oh, no, Brain. Narf! We've been spotted."

"Hush," Brain muttered, then teleported the two of them downward. He had them appear inside the food display case.

They walked around for several seconds before picking out a large banana nut muffin.

Brain shoved a hand through the thin crust and grabbed Pinky's arm in an attempt to teleport them to a dark place just outside the building, where they could eat in peace.

_**##**_

They emerged in a much darker place than he'd expected.

They looked around at the bleak blackness and the ebony wall of the 'Memory Soak'.

"Oh, no," Brain groaned. "Not again."

"Troz!" Pinky agreed.

* * *

**Revello Drive**

Just outside of the Summers' home, his destination at the time, Spike suddenly froze in his steps and began muttering to himself. He looked rather out of sorts.

"Great, just bloomin' terrific. You're curious all of a sudden? You stay quiet for a century or two and then out of the blue you want to come out and play? No you bloody well can't. You're my bloodthirsty soulless inner demon, not some puppy. It's just those cartoons rubbing off on you. I'm not going to turn into _a bleedin' cartoon_, **so shut up**. Blasted Hellmouth."

Shaking it off, Spike entered the house and walked directly into the dining room where the laptop had been set up on the large table.

Tara and Willow - well, mainly Willow - were there, hard at work hacking into the recently discovered video feed.

"So," Spike said, announcing his presence. "This'd be the spying that got the Slayer's knickers in a twist."

"Yep," Willow confirmed, typing away.

"Hey, Red," he said, pleasantly enough, as he tapped Willow on the shoulder and pressed the amulet into her surprised palm. "Don't say I never got you anything."

She turned it over, examining the detail, then handed it over to Tara.

Her fellow Wiccan stated that it was pretty, then shrugged and set it down on the table.

"Thanks, but, this is a job that requires enormous concentration and snack foods. I'm about to finally get the hidden address of the Trio, but..." Willow trailed off, frowning, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. "They've spotted me, they're trying to kill my tracer program and, by the _Goddess_... I've forgotten what to do!"

"Here let me try," Spike offered, hovering over the frustrated witch's shoulder. "Something about that... routing code... seems_ familiar_."

Willow stood up abruptly, spun around and shoved the surprised vampire across the room.

"Get out!" she panted angrily. She grabbed the amulet, from where Tara had set it on the table, and flung it directly at his chest. "And take your_ stupid _and_ distracting _piece of jewelry with you!"

Spike caught it and frowned, trying to put on his vamp-face. He was too annoyed at her to notice that his features didn't transform.

He turned on his heel, leather jacket spreading out, and left the room and the house in a huff.

His muttered words trailed behind him: "Try to do a _woman_ a favor..."

##

Willow took several breaths to calm herself, then raised an eyebrow at Tara's offer to take her place at the computer.

"Go ahead," Willow nodded, embarrassed by her sudden inability to think in binary.

Tara sat down, grinning, and entered into a fierce coding battle with the hackers hidden inside the Trio's lair.

Willow gasped, amazed at the brilliancy of the final strokes...

Tara laughed and leaned back in the chair, triumphant.

"_I did it,_ Willow! I tracked the Trio to their Secret Lair! That's the address!"

"Tara! I can't believe it! Your hacking skills! They're on a par with..._ Oz!_"

##

Willow froze at the words coming out of her mouth. She blushed at the reference to her ex-boyfriend.

The one that had nearly bitten her current girlfriend.

Tara, however, seemed to take the awkwardly given praise in a good way...

She even tilted her head back and let loose a glorious howl.

Willow gawked at this, amused and slightly worried, but then her eyes widened in fear.

Hairs dark and_ canine_ had begun to crawl up her lover's face...

* * *

...START...BrainAnya_**...BuffyOzBuffy...SpikeOz...SpozWillow...WozTara...**_

Current: Branya, Anyain, Spillow, Oke.


End file.
